Re: [Sheflug] New hardware confusion

[J Simpson <janet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi
Thanks everyone for their responses. I am still confused, but was able
to telephone my computer man to clarify some things.

He said the reason I should not connect both the old primary and new big
drive together is Wins 98 and xp will not play nicely together and I
will probably lose all my data.  He also said they are both set up as
primary drives.

As an aside my old secondary drive has all my data on it, which is why
he gave it to me.

He also said I had two optical something? so I would not beable to all
three drives connected.

He said he could see no reason why I could not do a clean linux install
on the new big drive (over the xp) and the bootloader would see my new
partitions and the old primary drive.  He said this would only be a
problem if I needed the wins 98 on the old primary to see anything on
the new big drive.  I am slowly moving away from Windows, so I don't see
why I need xp.  I think the only reason I have windows at all is as some
sort of comfort blanket.

Well,  I wouldn't.  I would split the old primary into part win98 and
another partition to be shared by both win98 and linux. Then the new big
drive would be just linux.

As the drive is so big maybe in the future I could multiboot with
another distribution, I fancy Mandriva as I have never tried it.

I did follow some of people's responses.
Lesley wrote:
> What is probably best is to sit there with the box open one night and
> boot up with the old disk configuration, back all your data off the SuSE
> and Win 98 from the primary to the secondary.  Make a note of all the
> grub/lilo bootloading info - which partitions etc.

I was going to put my /home directory on a DVD as it is less than 4 gb.
 I'm not sure how to back up wins 98, but there is not much on there I need.

Why do I need to make a note of all the grub/lilo bootloading info and
where do I find this?

> -----------BUT YOU MUST REMEMBER-
> to change /dev/hda to /dev/hdb when referring to the bootable partitions
> on the old primary because that old primary is now your secondary.  Your
> old secondary is sitting there holding a complete back up of your data.

I don't understand why I have to do this?
It all feels so simple in my mind.
Connect up old secondary.
Copy data from my old secondary to DVD
I would take a copy of my /home from my old primary on DVD.  Copy the
essential stuff from the win 98 partition to DVD.

Then burn my linux distribution.
Then connect up my new primary big drive and old primary.
Turn on the machine and insert installation disk.

Now from past experience linux finds your partitions on your drives.
Then you tell it what not to touch and where you want it to install.

I would tell it to leave the win 98 partition alone on the old primary
and then have the rest of the drive as accessible by win 98 and linux.
Then install linux appropriately on my new big primary drive.

Will the /dev/hda and /dev/hdb not be sorted out during installation?

Peter wrote:
>Win 98 will only run on the primary disk on the first controller. You could
exchange the two hard drives, so that the original is the primary and the
new one is the secondary. You can probably do that with jumpers on the
disks. Then you may need to reinstall your boot manager.

I don't think I understood any of the above (sadly).

You can connect a third disk temporarily in place of one of your optical
drives, while you copy data off it, then replace the optical drive.>

So I could disconnect my cd player, to temporarily use the connect for
my old secondary drive to download the information?

Robin wrote:
>What you propose sounds ok, the only problem may be because the 20g
drive has moved from primary to secondary or slave, win95 may see it D:
rather than as C: and so win95 will die.>

I understand this (I think).  But if wins 98 can't see the new big drive
why is it going to become D:.  Will something else tell it it is D:?

>As long as your drive has 2 ide channels you can usually run up to 4 ide
drives on one machine, so you'd have 3 harddrives and your dvd writer.
However if you are still running 20g and 10g drives it sounds like your
machine is an old one so it may only have a single channel.>

This explanation actually makes sense to me.  I think my machine is not
that old, but I have a CD player and a new DVD writer, so that leaves 2
for my drives.  I suppose I would be sorted without the CD player.

Hopefully my light bulb moment is coming soon.  Any further suggestions
to clarify are all gratefully received.

Regards

Janet


-- 
A. Because it breaks the logical sequence of discussion

Q. Why is top posting bad?

/Proud to be using Linux April 2005/

/Fedora Core 2 04/05/

/Suse 10.0 03/06/


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